Microplastics, tiny bits of plastic waste and pollution, are all around us — in oceans, rivers, soil and air, in whales, seabirds, and fish, and in us too. Sharing the same global environment and eating at the top of the food chain, we humans are not magically spared contamination from plastics.

The presence of microplastics in human feces is clearest proof of human exposure. And, there’s plenty more evidence suggesting that we’re taking the stuff in by eating, drinking and just breathing.

Plastics for dinner?

Research reveals that visible and invisible plastic debris is taken up by life forms throughout the ocean food web, from tiny plankton and shellfish to turtles, fish and dolphins. That such a spectrum of sea life is taking in plastics has sparked concern that, for years, humans have been consuming plastics too.

Most marine plastics are invisible to the naked eye. Petroleum-based plastics are most threatening. They resist biodegradation, fragmenting instead into ever smaller pieces. Over years, these microplastics become smaller than a millimeter and virtually invisible, making them easily transferred up aquatic food chains from zooplankton, mussels and smaller fish to larger carnivorous species and mammals. It has been confirmed that fish sold for human consumption at fish markets worldwide contain plastic debris.

But, plastics also show up in less obvious places on the dinner table. One study showed that 36 of 39 brands of table salt from 16 countries, including the United States, contained microplastics.

In city tap water tested in five continents, over 80 percent of samples contained plastic microfibers from synthetic textiles. The U.S. samples fared the worst: 94 percent contaminated. And, all 12 brands of beer tested in the Great Lakes region contained microplastics, averaging four particles per liter.

How much plastic might we be ingesting? One study estimated that shellfish consumers could be eating 11,000 microplastic particles annually. Another figured yearly consumption of 5,800 bits from just beer, salt and tap water.

Plastics appear inert, but they’re not. The various polymers’ building blocks and the additives used to impart desired properties can be dangerous chemicals that migrate out into the surrounds. Plastics also absorb toxic chemicals from seawater. When fish consume plastics the pollutants can transfer to their tissues.

It’s frightening to contemplate that degrading plastics eventually reach the microscopic dimensions of viruses, enabling them to penetrate the lung and gut and reach vital organs via the circulatory or lymphatic systems.

How are plastics getting into everything?

Less than a tenth of the 9 billion tonnes of plastics produced worldwide thus far has been recycled, the remainder ending in landfills or fragmenting in the environment.

Normal abrasion of clothing, upholstery and carpeting contaminates air with microplastic fibers. Besides breathing them in, there’s evidence we consume more microplastics from the dust that invisibly rains down on our meals than from the food itself.

The solution?

“The Age of Plastics” has provided us with countless conveniences, but it’s also unknowingly created a deadly monster: the microplastic contamination of the global environment and ourselves.

Sweeping reforms in humanity’s relationship to plastics are urgently required. The European Union has recently banned common single-use plastics, like cutlery, straws and cotton swabs. Hopefully the United States will follow suit and pressure manufacturers to substitute or redesign plastics so they’re made from sustainable, non-petro-chemical, non-toxic, biodegradable, and easily recycled materials.